An Awesome ‘F1’ Movie and Superman Expectations With Van Lathan and Charles Holmes

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Van Lathan Jr. to talk about Joseph Kosinski’s ‘F1’ film, starring Brad Pitt and Damson Idris (2:16), before discussing Pitt’s acting career. Then, Charles Holmes joins the pod to try to convince Bill to watch James Gunn’s ‘Superman’ (59:01). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Van Lathan Jr. and Charles Holmes Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is presented by State Farm®. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm® with the Assist. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by PNC Bank. In today's sports, everyone is constantly trying to outdo each other. Trick formations, infield shifts, constant rotation changes. Yet it's proven time and time again that strong fundamentals are the thing that will lead you to victory. Banking, no different. While everyone else tries to outdo each other, PNC Bank just keeps going right down the middle with steady, calculated money moves and the financial wins just keep coming. PNC Bank, brilliantly boring since 1865, brilliantly boring since 1865 is a registered mark of the PNC Financial Services Group, Incorporated. PNC Bank, National Association, Member, FTIC. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech.

• 0:42Bill Simmons?

  Whether it's a pumpkin spice coffee that goes splat in your seat or a weekend tailgate that leaves your trunk full of gear and who knows what. You're going to want WeatherTech in your vehicle, whether you call it fall, autumn or spooky season. Whether the mess is your fault, the kids, the dogs, or the weather's fault, you're going to want WeatherTech for American-made floor liners and a cargo liner that laugh in the face of fall weather. Visit weatherTech.com today. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. We put up Jaws 2 on the rewatchables on Monday night, and it was one of the silliest podcasts we've done in the last couple of years, actually. Me and Fantasy and Chris had a great time, a lot of laughs. We have It's Complicated coming next Monday because we hadn't done a rom-com in a while. You can watch all of these on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well.

• 1:26Bill Simmons?

  You can watch this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. You're probably noticing, after years and years and years of complaints, my camera finally looks pretty good. We might have spent some time. I have not decorated this office yet, but I was able to grab some cardboard cutouts of Sly Stallone and Crockett and Tubbs and at least have them shepherd me. You can see Bird and Magic's feet in the back, but we're going to be decorating this at some point. But we finally went high-tech. I've heard your complaints. I'm a man of the people. You guys want a better camera quality. Well, now you have it. Coming up later, Van Lathan is going to talk to me about F1, a spectacular sports movie with Brad Pitt that's out in the theaters now.

• 2:10Bill Simmons?

  We tried not to do a lot of spoilers.

• 2:14Bill Simmons?

  Until the end of the of the pod, but we talked for like an hour about the movie. So like in the last 10 minutes of that, we start talking a little bit about some heavy plot stuff. And then at the end, Charles Holmes came on with Van, that's Van's Midnight Boys partner. And we talked about whether I should see Superman or not and where I stand with the Ringer verse, because I know that's keeping you up at night. Do I do I like this nerd universe and all these DC Comics and Marvel and all this stuff? I'm kind of on the outside and it's been that way for a while, but they kind of talked me into seeing Superman. We're going to take a quick break and then Pearl Jam.

• 3:19Bill Simmons?

  All right, Van Lathan is here. We are taping this. It's middle of the week. I saw F1 in the theater with Brad Pitt last night. Whole Simmons family, little 1015 showing at The Grove. It was great. It was packed. IMAX. Had a great time. I have so many things I want to talk about. I'm not a giant F1 fan, neither are you. Never seen F1 race before the movie. Ben Simmons, my son, on the way home is like, I think I might get into F1. It's like one of those kind of movies. Same. It was better than I thought. I'll start here. I can't believe this actually worked out that this movie they spent all this money on with 61 year old Brad Pitt as a as a Formula One driver.

• 4:03Bill Simmons?

  Seems a little improbable, kind of old. And then you hear the story about how they're spending money, spending, it's, oh my God, Apple, Apple's involved, Apple's had some busts. They're doing it for IMAX. It feels like Days of Thunder kind of for 2025. There's a lot of signs that this might not work out. And instead it worked out great. And I think it's one of the best sports movies of the 21st century. I'll go that far. Sexy movie. Sexy movie. Sexy movie.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Sometimes when you use the term sexy for a movie, you think, ah, there's a lot of sexy, sex-having people in the movie. No, movie is sexy, cars look sexy, the wardrobe is beautiful. The, it moves with a certain pace. It's a sexy film, it's a sleek film, it's a stylish film. It also does something else. It, you go into the movie, or the movie assumes that you don't know shit about F1. So it builds the lore of the sport. People that know a lot about F1, I wonder how they would have responded to it? Because maybe they're being, maybe you're watching a basketball game and they go, if you get, uh, double figures in three different statistical categories, that's known as a triple double.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Maybe if you watch a lot of basketball, you'd be like, I don't need you to tell me, I'm a moron.

• 5:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  This movie held my hand through the F1 driving and gave me a very simple and easy to go on to story. And that made for a really, really satisfying experience in the theater.

• 5:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the only time it really, it really grabbed your hand and was like, look, we gotta really explain this to you was some of the, I'll do some spoiler alerts later, but, um, there was some tire stuff in one of the climactic races that they were really carefully telling us. Like, here's why this is important, blah, blah, blah.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Well, that's what I mean. What I mean is they-

• 5:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I never felt like I was being talked down to like you do in some sports movies.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Right, like, that, that's what I mean. What I mean is, it's like, okay, there's drama in here. I don't understand the sport, so why is this dramatic? I'm like, oh my God, he's got to switch his tires. Jesus.

• 6:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Got to switch his tires.

• 6:06Bill Simmons?

  There's two guys that are on the same team. There's a bunch of teams.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:10Bill Simmons?

  This team's the worst team. This other team has had, gone through all these drivers. They're so desperate, they're gonna go with this old washed-up guy.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:18Bill Simmons?

  You could understand all of it. I mean, there's some stuff about, uh, when they would do laps, where it would be like, lap 54. I'm like, I don't, how many laps are in this race? And they'll be like, four laps to go. Okay, I guess there's four laps to go.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:31Bill Simmons?

  Um, but for the most part, I didn't feel like it talked down to me, which I liked. I thought, as you know, I love movies when I go into a world. But just like take me into this world. So we're in different cities and countries every week.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Be part of it.

• 6:44Bill Simmons?

  Um, we, there's like this whole rich person scene with like those little clubs. Like I've never been to an F1, have you?

• 6:50Speaker 01

  No.

• 6:51Bill Simmons?

  There's like these, it's almost like these big ass luxury boxes with parties.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:55Bill Simmons?

  Um, and all this money and all this ego. I've seen some of it. Like I watched the first season of Drive to Survive. I liked it. Um, and there's a lot there. The drivers have a mystique about them. So it made sense that Brad Pitt versus like, I mean, you were, one of the things you said when we were talking before was this is, it's a little bit of the Top Gun Maverick blueprint.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Certainly. Yeah, it's Brad, it's Brad Pitt's Top Gun Maverick, but look.

• 7:17Bill Simmons?

  But he's, he brings more to the, more to the table at this point in his career, I think, than Cruz does for a movie like this.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Well, with Tom.

• 7:24Bill Simmons?

  I need to feel like he might fuck the, the technician who's, who's running the cars. With Cruz, I'm not gonna feel that way.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  That's the difference. So also just saying something, it was age appropriate love interest here, which.

• 7:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Carrie Condon.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. So with Brad, you really do get it and believe it, right? You get it and believe it because, you know, we've seen Brad Pitt. He's still incredibly virile and handsome, but we know that he's got some tread on his tires.

• 7:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, some baggage. He brings the baggage into the movies now.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Brings the baggage.

• 7:56Bill Simmons?

  Cliff Booth, this character.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Same thing. It's okay. He's playing off of it. It's working. But everything that you just described about the movie is another reason why uh, I really liked it so much. There's nothing on screen that you don't wanna watch.

• 8:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  You wanna watch exotic locales. The cars are beautiful. It's a clean looking movie. So all they gotta do after they set the, the, the, the story up is just go fast. That's it.

• 8:22Bill Simmons?

  Well, and racing movies are the most easy to understand of any sport because it's like, there's a checkered flag at the end and whoever drives through first wins it.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  And it's dangerous.

• 8:31Bill Simmons?

  And they kept doing, yeah, it's dangerous. You might have car crashes. They did a really good job, I thought, with how they did the scoreboard and the leaderboard and the cars moving up and down. Um, cause we've seen that go badly. Or we've seen like announcers be like, no, he is in fourth place.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:47Bill Simmons?

  Just feeling like they're shoehorning it after the fact because the test audience didn't understand. There was none of that.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  And you know what's dramatic? A pit stop.

• 8:56Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Stopping and everybody having to change tires that quickly, build a new car, all of that stuff. If you can build a drama around that and then make that a visual touch point in your film, that's gonna work.

• 9:12Bill Simmons?

  It's a fun world, cuz you start thinking about like the pit crew people. There was that one lady who couldn't, she fucked up a couple of tires.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:18Bill Simmons?

  Tires, like, oh, I bet at the end of the movie, she's gonna be humming with gas.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  And she goes to him and she says, hey, don't encourage me out there, it makes me look weak.

• 9:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  There's a whole, uh, culture that exists behind it and everything. They're training tennis balls, there's a little Rocky IV in there.

• 9:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  To where, uh, Damson's character is using all the high-tech stuff. And that's kinda like, oh, my god.

• 9:43Bill Simmons?

  There's a lot of Rocky IV.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Right, and then Brad.

• 9:46Bill Simmons?

  He's almost doing the split screens.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  He's just using the tennis balls and running with the crew. And in some way, that's more effective. It's all the tropes that we've seen before.

• 9:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  But I saw this movie in 70 millimeter at CityWalk. And it was breathtaking.

• 10:04Bill Simmons?

  So we, we should have started, we probably should have started with that. Because the reason this movie works over every other reason. And I've been watching sports movies my entire life. We did The Longest Yard rewatchables a year ago, 1974. That's kind of the modern sports movie. So we're now in year 52 of sports movies. We've done every version of these. What we hadn't done is the IMAX. This is like a fucking exhilarating experience to be in the theater for this. Where you're just like, you're not, I had to pee for the last hour. And I'm not one of those old guys who has to pee all the time. I just, I had a giant coke, I had a water, I was eating popcorn. And I didn't wanna get up.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:43Bill Simmons?

  I was like, I don't wanna miss anything, I don't know what's gonna, I, I, and you're just sitting there like, ah. Um, it's, they filmed it a certain way. They knew they spent a shitload of money just on, cuz they knew that the IMAX thing was gonna be the calling card. And this is, you know, I know Fantasy and Big Picture always talks about how do we save movies? How do we reinvigorate movies? And a big part of this in the last six years was we gotta get people going to the theater.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Guy, give me experience, I can't get it home.

• 11:10Bill Simmons?

  This is the ultimate, you have to see this in the theater. They do these with the superhero movies or like Jurassic Park, like, it'll be fun to see in the theater. But, but it's not a must, you can still see it, whatever. This has to be seen in the theater. I know, I shouldn't have fired shots. We were doing so well for like five minutes.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  You just can't not do it.

• 11:30Bill Simmons?

  It's like, whatever, Superman, oh.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  You gotta, I just, you gotta see Superman in the theater. There's no reason to downtalk Superman and Fantastic Four to uplift F1.

• 11:40Bill Simmons?

  It's fair, you're right.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  But I'll say this.

• 11:41Bill Simmons?

  Good criticism.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  I'll say this. Sinners as well. Now, Sinners is a movie that you think, I could definitely watch that at the crib. But then Ryan Coole comes out and makes the case as to why this is a theater-going experience. So that video that he did, they got like 10 million views with the Kodak people. Great. This movie is the type of movie that I go, when I'm talking to somebody, I go, man, you have got to see this on the biggest screen possible. Because it's so immersive, you're gonna be inside of the race. Kaczynski is, and we have to start.

• 12:17Bill Simmons?

  Well, Joseph Kaczynski, who's, I think, moving up the ladder for me. He's kind of like Tony Scott 2.0 now.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  That's exactly who he is. He is such an expert blockbuster filmmaker. He knows the beats that you need to see to marry fantastic action with a big movie star.

• 12:38Bill Simmons?

  And style.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  And style, just enough plot to get you over the finish line.

• 12:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this Tony Scott would have easily made some version of this movie.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 12:46Bill Simmons?

  I mean, he did make this movie.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Days of Thunder, yeah.

• 12:48Bill Simmons?

  But the IMAX piece of it, and just that technology is getting so cool now, that you just got lost in the screen. But this is like when we did, I don't know, we do rewatchables from the 70s and like a movie like Jaws, or The Exorcist, and people saw it in the theater and it like blew their mind. Because it's either that or they were home with like a little black and white TV. Now, everybody has nice TVs. You could see Sinners at home.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:14Bill Simmons?

  I still think it's gonna be a better experience in the theater. I've had it both ways. It was just better in the theater. This is like, I, I, I think it will be a rewatchable. And you'll definitely watch this at home, but I think this was like a must. And I don't know if there's been a sports movie that was before this one where you were like, you actually had to see this in the theater.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Well, not all sports lend themselves to this huge, because most sports movies are driven not by the actual playing of the sport.

• 13:44Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  They're driven by the culture of the sport. Like, we did Blue Chips on the rewatchables. The basketball in Blue Chips, it's not bad, but it's like not a part of the story as much

• 13:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  as the culture of college basketball is. This movie is, has a dramatic setup to get you to the racing. The racing is the reason why you come see the film. To that point, didn't have enough story for you.

• 14:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Kind of a paint by number story, but it still worked.

• 14:15Bill Simmons?

  Well, I had, I wrote down all the sports movie tropes that it did. Because it, and I, I started to really feel this way. I remember writing a column about this in the late 2000s that I had just seen too many sports movies and my brain became AI for a sports movie. So as soon as they would set something up, I remember I wrote about Invictus. Remember the Matt Damon rugby movie where he's playing a six foot three monolith?

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Morgan Freeman in that?

• 14:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Morgan Freeman. And I remember writing about, it's that there's like a South African kid and a cop, and they show them early and they're like far away from each other and the cops. And you, and I was like, all right, by the end of this movie, they're gonna be high fiving.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:53Bill Simmons?

  You just kind of know.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:54Bill Simmons?

  Your AI brain is like, I've just seen too many of these. This movie had a lot of sports movie tropes that you're like.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Old dog, young dog.

• 15:02Bill Simmons?

  The best that never was.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:04Bill Simmons?

  Seen that one. He could have gotten there, but that thing happened and it sent him in a tailspin. But now he's in a good place. Still something left in the gas tank. Maybe. Old guy versus new guys.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:17Bill Simmons?

  Downtrodden team that needed a spark.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:20Bill Simmons?

  In this case, the Apex team.

• 15:24Bill Simmons?

  The monologue about chasing that one great feeling. Which not to, I, I don't feel like we're gonna spoil the movie too much, but Brad Pitt has this monologue in the movie. That's, that's really good. I think he would have nailed it more 20 years ago. We could talk, I wanna talk about some Brad Pitt stuff later, but um, the monologue sets up this moment in the final race. That's just fucking awesome.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:48Bill Simmons?

  I mean, it's like one of the better sports movie scenes of the last 30, 35 years. It's, and you, you kinda know when he does the monologue, you're like, alright, I wonder now.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  You know.

• 15:57Bill Simmons?

  I wonder if there's gonna be an umbilical cord now to what I, what I think might have, and then they fucking nailed it.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Right, even, that is a trope. The sports movie trope of describing the thing and then just waiting until that thing happens. Like in Tin Cup, when they're talking about the last time, uh, Roy, uh, Roy. Yeah, when he made a crowd pleasing 12.

• 16:20Bill Simmons?

  Well, you know what started it was Rocky.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 16:23Bill Simmons?

  He, he, he goes to see the, the, where they're having the fight. Remember the promoter's like, I'm sure you'll give us a good fight. Don't care about your shorts.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:32Bill Simmons?

  And he goes back and he sees Adrian and he says, I'm not gonna win. I can't beat him.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:39Bill Simmons?

  But if I can just go the distance, nobody's ever been the distance with Creed. And he does this whole Stallone monologue. And you're like, oh man, now I just want this guy to go the, like he's planting all the seeds. And they kinda do that with this, but after five decades of these movies, you know, when they do the monologue, you're like, alright, we're gonna circle back on this one.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  But once it actually happens in this film, I'm sitting there and I'm like, because the movie has kind of set up, I guess, at least a shred of belief that things can go wrong. There are some unexpected turns, so once it starts happening for him, once he gets locked in that zone, I'm just like, man, cross the finish line and win. And if a sports movie gets you to that point, you know that your protagonist is probably going to win at the end.

• 17:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  But them getting you to want the protagonist to win. That's the, the, the goal of the movie.

• 17:34Bill Simmons?

  Well, when I, so I was, I've been writing about sport. Well, I don't write anymore, but when I, I used to write about sports movies all the time. I was like the Roger Ebert of bad sports movies.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Oh, you do say.

• 17:44Bill Simmons?

  Trying to write, I'd write reviews on anything. I wrote a review of Summer Catch. That's how many, how much, many sports movies I've covered.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  That's an important movie, though.

• 17:52Bill Simmons?

  Well, for you.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's.

• 17:54Bill Simmons?

  White Girl Hall fan.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  That's one of the movies when I was like that. And then a couple of years later, she comes back with the iconic scene in, and now I'll pronounce you Chuck and Larry.

• 18:02Bill Simmons?

  There you go.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:03Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. It's no secret that great teams need great teammates. And when it comes to insurance, State Farm is there to help you find the right coverage for your home, car, and more. Whether you need an in-person or digital assist, they're ready when life hits you with a full-court press. Get a game plan that helps fit your life and talk to State Farm today. State Farm, with the assist, coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability and eligibility vary by state. Chill scenes were massively important in sports movies for a long, long time. By chill scene, I mean those scenes when, like Hoosiers has a bunch of them where it's like, they go around the, the locker room before the big games.

• 18:46Bill Simmons?

  It's like, I want to win for my dad. And you're just like, oh, man. Or like when Ollie hits the, the two free throws and everyone explodes and, and you know, you just, if you, if you have a chance to get goosebumps, or you get that little like funny feeling when it's like, oh, man, that was great. This, this, this movie has a chill scene.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  What's chill scene?

• 19:06Bill Simmons?

  Uh, the, the last, the last, uh, big climactic scene.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Oh, a chills, you mean chills?

• 19:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you're just like.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 19:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 19:14Bill Simmons?

  Goosebumps.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 19:16Bill Simmons?

  Got one of those.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  It's, and it also has like, something to where, something in it that a lot of sports movies do, some of them do poorly, to where you start to wonder if your protagonist is getting on your fucking nerves. Like if this guy's just a loser, right? You, you, you.

• 19:36Bill Simmons?

  In this case, Sonny Hayes.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:38Bill Simmons?

  What a name.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Right, if this guy's just a, you know, you're like, come on, Sonny, don't have sex with the technical leader of the team.

• 19:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I know she's got that little cute Irish accent.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  I know.

• 19:50Bill Simmons?

  She keeps looking at you with those little bat nose eyes at you.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  But Sonny, Sonny, just stay away from it.

• 19:55Bill Simmons?

  Come on, Sonny.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Sonny's whole deal, and then you're like, you know what? No, that old Sonny, he's gonna pull through.

• 20:00Bill Simmons?

  Get in, get in there, Sonny.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, Sonny, Sonny, Sonny's okay. I don't mind it from Sonny. I accept it from Sonny.

• 20:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  You know, and then I think, I think Damson's part in this movie, because this is not a character that there's asked much of. However.

• 20:17Bill Simmons?

  But he brings a lot to the table somehow.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  What you needed was someone who could charisma, movie star their way through. It's a very important role in his career, because I'm like, oh, when he's on screen, he is worthy to be next to Brad Pitt, because you could easily get bowled over by the charm and the mag- the magnetism, should I say, of Brad Pitt, but he, he never really does.

• 20:40Bill Simmons?

  Also, like on paper, it's like Brad Pitt, old grizzled white hero guy. Here's your cocky black counterpart that you're gonna have. It's like, alright, this could go, this could go, well, I'm saying, this is on paper, on paper, this.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Wait a minute, is that, wait a minute, is that this? Is this old grizzled?

• 20:57Bill Simmons?

  When you saw them.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Have you been F wanting this situation from the time I've been at the ring of cocky?

• 21:03Bill Simmons?

  Is cocky black counterpart erroneous in any way?

• 21:06Speaker 01

  It's not, it's not, I'm just wondering if, am I the cocky black counterpart?

• 21:09Bill Simmons?

  Trailer, and you're like, alright, I get what this is. But I didn't feel like, watching the movie, I didn't, I actually really liked him.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:15Bill Simmons?

  And I kinda saw his side of everything, you know?

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, because, uh, we haven't talked about Javier Bardem, and I guess we should, but he is the guy that has sacrificed to be the lead driver, and he's got all the potential.

• 21:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  He's too in his own head. How is he going to both take the direction from the old wizard, but not lose too much of himself and become him? And at the end, he was like, um.

• 21:44Bill Simmons?

  Well, wait, wait on that point, though.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Okay, cool.

• 21:46Bill Simmons?

  The, uh, it's, it's, there was like some NBA NFL parallels with that too, where it's like, I'm a franchise player, that's what my contract says.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 21:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, your team's not winning. Well, but that's, I'm, I have.

• 21:58Bill Simmons?

  Five million people on Instagram.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 22:00Bill Simmons?

  Like the way he was doing that, we haven't seen a lot of those characters in sports movies just because we're not making as many sports movies that are good anymore. And that specific character is the last 10 years. I am a star because social media and my place and I've done commercials, but I haven't really done anything. But that doesn't matter because and I have my guy who's arranging all this stuff and I've been reading. It's interesting that that that specific character, because I think of the different generations of sports movies. In this generation we're in now, I don't know other sports movies that have hit that.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Well, I think you could argue that there are a couple of reasons. Number one, we relate to that character more now than we ever have.

• 22:41Bill Simmons?

  It's a last seven, eight years thing.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Right. In the past, we just didn't relate to that guy. That guy that went, hey, um, make a lot of money, become as famous as you possibly can. If you win, cool. If you build great teams and great culture, cool, but you don't have to. Because like now we have arguments where it's like, you know, hey, man, if you came up on a $225 million contract and you never got to the conference finals, that's a win.

• 23:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  We're very cynical about these things now. F1 is interesting because it's a sport where you could die.

• 23:19Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Because it's a sport where you could die, that means if you don't do things in the right way and you don't listen and you don't engage in teamwork, that could be the last race that you run. So.

• 23:31Bill Simmons?

  Right. Like Gilbert Arenas wasn't going to die in the court if the Wizards went 35 and 47. Whereas this guy, well, maybe he was the bad example.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Shout out to Gil's arena.

• 23:41Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  You never know how it's gonna go in the locker room with Gil. Shout out to all of them. I love that show.

• 23:47Bill Simmons?

  Let's go Kenny Anderson.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  But, but yeah, but in this situation, remember, he doesn't listen to Sonny and he ends up out of commission for a little while.

• 23:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but he could have, he could have told his mom that he didn't listen.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, he did. He let, he let Sonny take the whole fall.

• 24:01Bill Simmons?

  Sonny take it. Yeah, I like that character though. And I, I think when you asked, like, was it a little light on the plot? I don't think it was light on the plot. It was just familiar and I don't know if that's the movie's fault because we've just had too many sports movies. I don't really know, unless you're gonna do like what Cameron Crowe was able to do with Jerry Maguire, where you're just completely reinventing a sports movie, right? Where the star athlete is not even the most important character and it's built around an agent and this whole world around sports. Which is kinda where movies have gone from a sports standpoint the last, I would say, 15 years. And I think the flipping point was probably Moneyball range.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:44Bill Simmons?

  There was a movie called Sugar in 2009 that was great.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  I loved it.

• 24:48Bill Simmons?

  Sugar's in the discussion.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  I randomly saw that movie on HBO years ago about the Dominican pitcher that comes to him.

• 24:56Bill Simmons?

  It's a classic.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  And he then, he starts really pitching well and it looks like he's a phenom and then it kinda doesn't.

• 25:03Bill Simmons?

  Goes sideways.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Not a ton of dialogue or anything, but just fantastic movie. Almost plays like a documentary. Love that film.

• 25:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so, and you saw like The Way Back with Affleck.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I liked that one too.

• 25:14Bill Simmons?

  Warrior. We moved into a different kind of era of sports movies the last 15 years where they were more, not like the ones we grew up with, they're more like movies that also happen to be about sports.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:27Bill Simmons?

  And character studies and this is like an old school, could've come out, basically in any decade, there would've been some version of it, which I thought was cool. Racing movies.

• 25:40Bill Simmons?

  So, Lamont?

• 25:41Speaker 01

  I've seen three.

• 25:42Bill Simmons?

  Steve McQueen, Lamont.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Never saw it.

• 25:45Bill Simmons?

  Bobby Deerfield, Pacino?

• 25:46Speaker 01

  No.

• 25:48Bill Simmons?

  Something like it. Days of Thunder.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:51Bill Simmons?

  Driven with Slash Malone and Burt Reynolds where they both have just had, all of a sudden, they weren't cool anymore. They both had a lot of plastic surgery. I remember writing that they both looked like they were in Halloween masks of themselves. And then our boy from Remember the Titans, what was his name? Sunshine?

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Kip Perdue.

• 26:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Kip Perdue. What did he play in Remember the Titans? Sunshine?

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Played Sunshine, of course, yeah.

• 26:14Bill Simmons?

  So, that was supposed to be his star vehicle and he literally crashed.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:20Bill Simmons?

  Tao Dege Knights.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 26:23Bill Simmons?

  Senna, which was a documentary.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Never saw it.

• 26:26Bill Simmons?

  One of the best sports documentaries of all time.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 26:30Bill Simmons?

  Rush.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:32Bill Simmons?

  Rush is great.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, now Rush is.

• 26:36Bill Simmons?

  Rush is also probably a top 10 sports movie of the century.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  A ringer-pilled movie because I had never seen that movie until I got here and everybody's like, you really need to watch that. And then I checked it out.

• 26:45Bill Simmons?

  And I think Rush has aged really nicely because people just care about F1 more though.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:49Bill Simmons?

  You know, and then Ford versus Ferrari was the only other one.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Um, what about?

• 26:54Bill Simmons?

  There's been some bad ones.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I saw one, there was one with, and I don't know if I'm baking this up, but I feel like there was one with Kenny, it was Kenny Rogers back in the day where he played a race car driver and he had to take care.

• 27:06Bill Simmons?

  Stroker Ace?

• 27:07Speaker 01

  I don't think it was Stroker Ace. He had to take care of a wayward group of kids.

• 27:11Bill Simmons?

  Was it fat Kenny Rogers or skinnier Kenny Rogers?

• 27:14Speaker 01

  I can't remember, man. I'm telling you.

• 27:15Bill Simmons?

  We go back and forth.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  There was a Kenny Rogers movie where he was a race car driver. I used to, it used to come on cable.

• 27:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  He had to take place of a group of misfit kids.

• 27:25Bill Simmons?

  I did not have that one on my list.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Okay, I could, I could be making this up, bro.

• 27:29Bill Simmons?

  It's interesting though, because boxing movies just happen over and over again. We talk about that. It's just, they never, and every, it seems like almost every great actor wants to say, fuck it. I gotta do my boxing movie. I'm gonna get in crazy shape.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  See, that's a part of it.

• 27:43Bill Simmons?

  And it's, and then I'm just, people get to see me and I'll win the big fight in the end. I'll get the girl. And nobody can resist it. And you go through, every great actor or good actor who is like over 5'9", has probably made one.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  It's, it's over 5'9".

• 27:58Bill Simmons?

  Well, like Pacino never made a boxing, would have been, I guess he could have been like a flyweight.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  But like Denzel, Jake Gyllenhaal.

• 28:04Bill Simmons?

  They all have to do it. I guess Leo's one of the only ones who didn't do it.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Ah, it doesn't fit with him. Being a boxer in a movie. He never, he's not really physical in movies.

• 28:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Like it's not, I mean, he's sometimes a little bit.

• 28:17Bill Simmons?

  Tom Hardy does the MMA version of it. So, um, but racing, which I think can really work if you pull it up, but you need the kind of access. I mean, that was another thing. This movie, you were fully immersed because F1 let them fully immerse themselves in the movie. You saw all the drivers, like they're racing. You know, people like Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton are like, kind of borderline villains in the movie because they're trying to beat our guys.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, Lewis is a producer on it. It, it. It's also the perfect time for F1 because it's only been in the last

• 28:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  five, six years, like, obviously, you know, pre-pandemic and then a little bit after that, I've heard people that I know say, hey, Van, you should go to F1 race. It's really just like an awesome

• 28:59Bill Simmons?

  Well, we know, I mean, we know people that just have become addicted to it.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:03Bill Simmons?

  You know,

• 29:04Speaker 01

  I saw Trayvon last night at the movies.

• 29:05Bill Simmons?

  Friends in my life, like people that work for The Ringer, people like Resillo, people that just like really got into it, that wake up in the mornings. We started a Ringer F1 show, like, I never would have expected to have a F1 show.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  This movie is like, I was saying, I saw Trayvon last night. He was leaving the movie for like the third time because he loves F1 that much.

• 29:24Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Also, it's a beautiful movie about beautiful, rich, expensive shit, which also

• 29:32Bill Simmons?

  And great locales.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  And great locales.

• 29:34Bill Simmons?

  Going all over the place. You even get to be in Vegas with like a nice hotel suite looking out on the strip.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  They're driving past the CVS on the strip and you're like, oh, I know where that is. And this is, maybe I should go to the F1 race in Vegas. The villain, the real villain in the movie doesn't appear to like the end of the second act into the third act.

• 29:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we meet him, but we don't know he's the villain.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  We meet him, but we don't know he's the villain yet. There are parts of the film that I think a different writer came in and put in the movie. Was there any part of you that could see the seams in it?

• 30:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that, I mean, there's definitely some, there's some holes. I thought there was a couple of parts, you know, they, they definitely wanted to get the, you do the dip where it's like, we're riding high, montage, now we're low. Now we're riding up again.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:22Bill Simmons?

  And it felt like it was, it was, they tried to do two dips with the accidents.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:28Bill Simmons?

  Which, by the way, one of those accidents, I thought was one of the best things I've ever seen filmed in a sports movie. I was like, I don't even know how they did it.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Wait, you're talking about, uh,

• 30:36Bill Simmons?

  The, the Sonny's one.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Sonny's accident, yeah.

• 30:40Bill Simmons?

  That was spectacular. And Kaczynski was on Sean's pod talking about how they studied all of these different accidents that actually happened and they didn't like completely recreate them because you can't completely, but like try to be in the vicinity of what the actual accident was. So it was realistic. But I thought that part was great. And then,

• 31:03Bill Simmons?

  We gotta talk about Brad Pitt.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was about to say that, yeah.

• 31:06Bill Simmons?

  Cause that's another giant piece. I mean, there's some really good supporting people in this movie all over the place. I thought Carey Cahn was excellent. Not who you would take, like, one of the ways they fuck movies up like this is, it's like, uh...

• 31:18Speaker 01

  They overcast it.

• 31:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's like, uh, Gail Goddard. Yeah. Gail Goddard is gonna be the, uh...

• 31:24Speaker 01

  They overcast.

• 31:25Bill Simmons?

  Gonna be the te- the lady who's building the cars. It's like, come on.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  They put, they put somebody in there, like, it was like, uh...

• 31:32Bill Simmons?

  It's Denise Richards.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's like Nuclear Physicist Christmas Jones.

• 31:37Bill Simmons?

  Or like Elizabeth Shue in The Saint.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Right, it's like...

• 31:40Bill Simmons?

  It's like, okay.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know what I mean? Just cast it properly.

• 31:44Bill Simmons?

  She was just cool. It's like, oh, man, I like, I like, cause she was in the, uh, that Colin Farrell movie. She's been in a bunch of stuff. She's a good actress.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Everything that came from that character just has to be believable. You have, it has to be believable that she would leave whatever situation she was in as a smart egghead and go run a racing team or whatever. It has to be believable that she would, didn't have chemistry with Brad Pitt.

• 32:06Bill Simmons?

  Axum is great. I like the way, sometimes movies will have this, like, she was really convincing, like, you could tell she was, she was enchanted by Sonny. She did a good job of just kind of like, you're watching her going, is she falling for this dude? I feel like she is, but you kinda didn't know for a while.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  And then by the balcony scene, she's full on hanging on his arm.

• 32:26Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Like, he's got her in a...

• 32:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, she was good. That, I thought she was a really good character, cause that's a character in a sports movie that could go sideways. And then our guy, uh, our guy from No Country For Old Men, Flip a Coin.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Oh, Javier Bardem.

• 32:40Bill Simmons?

  Our damn.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 32:41Bill Simmons?

  Flip a coin.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Or they get it mixed in you, and it would just become a coin.

• 32:46Bill Simmons?

  I just think like, when they have, when they have somebody like that, I just think he should have the haircut from No Country For Old Men. Just, but never explained. He's just got a bowl cut the whole time. He's just dressed like the guy who's just carrying around one of those air vapor guns.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Quick aside, do you know?

• 33:00Bill Simmons?

  But he, I thought he was really good.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  He was great. Um, you know what one of the saddest scenes, just quick aside? The scene between Anton and Carson, which is Woody Harrelson.

• 33:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  That is a sad scene. I watched No Country For Old Men twice last week. I'm not sure why. It's the scene where he's, Woody Harrelson, with all of that charm is sitting there.

• 33:24Bill Simmons?

  He's just not buying it.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  In front of the Grim Reaper.

• 33:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  And you know he's dead and he's trying to talk his way out of it. It's a really top five sad scenes.

• 33:33Bill Simmons?

  That's one of the two movies that has grown on me the most in the 21st century. We already did it on rewatchable.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 33:40Bill Simmons?

  I saw it. I was like, ah, weird ending when I saw it in the theater. And then you watch it a couple more times and you're like, that ending was amazing. And now in 2025, I'm like, that's one of the best movies of the last 30 years.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  But when you see him in this film, number one, once again, cast it very well. He looks, first of all, like an F1 driver. That's how those guys look, right?

• 34:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he looks like an ex-F1 driver. Yeah, you can see like he won like in 2000.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Those guys are good looking.

• 34:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  They're European.

• 34:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  He looks, and then he also looks like somebody that, because Brad Pitt is Brad Pitt when he's on screen. Who is Brad Pitt gonna respect, right? It's kind of like the Jon Hamm situation from Top Gun Maverick. You need somebody in that role that you could be like, oh, okay. I see why this conversation between these two people would make sense. Not just in this world, but like in my mind as well. So he fills that spot.

• 34:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you have those ex-F1 guys.

• 34:36Bill Simmons?

  They're just like, keep your girl away from these guys. They have to have some sort of vibe, yeah.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Ex-1.

• 34:42Bill Simmons?

  Like, don't, don't, no, you're not driving my wife home.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Everything in Europe has to do with sex.

• 34:48Bill Simmons?

  It's horny, horny region of the world.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Sex. Like, I'm looking at these soccer players. They're out there running around like models, bro. Dudes in the NBA don't even be getting a lineup, alright? They're playing three games in a week. Sometimes the shit, the opening day, and that's it. Like, everything out there, it's sex, sex, sex with these Europeans is what I've noticed.

• 35:10Bill Simmons?

  That's a good observation. Brad Pitt.

• 35:15Bill Simmons?

  Four decades of Brad Pitt as a leading man in an iconic movie. And I think this movie is an iconic sports movie.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Already you'd say that.

• 35:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 35:26Bill Simmons?

  Only, listen, it's, it's not, I don't know where it's gonna rank in the all time pyramid, but I think for what it does with the technology we have, I think it's gonna be, I think it's gonna be remembered. I think it's influential.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  Greatest racing movie ever?

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Are you ready to put it up in the pantheon for discussion?

• 35:45Bill Simmons?

  I'm looking at the list.

• 35:48Bill Simmons?

  I have to watch Rush again. I thought Rush was great. But, um, but like for, to appeal to me and my wife and my kids.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:57Bill Simmons?

  And I'm sure the generations in between, and I know my dad would like it. Now, now it's four generations of people who are like, I just know if you like sports movies, you're gonna be in on this. And whether you like racing or not, you're gonna like it. Brad Pitt. So,

• 36:13Bill Simmons?

  Seven, Fight Club, Ocean's Eleven, Inglourious Basterds, Moneyball, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and F1. Just those seven movies from a rewatchable popcorn. Culturally, they mattered when they came out for some way. And that's a span of seven was 1995.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:30Bill Simmons?

  Mid 90s to now. Like, think about who the, like, famous athletes were in 1995. It was like Steve Young won the Super Bowl that year.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, Michael Jordan.

• 36:38Bill Simmons?

  Michael Jordan was coming back from retiring the first time. Like, that's a long time ago. I have, uh, six stages of Brad Pitt.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 36:48Bill Simmons?

  Stage number one, up and coming, interesting handsome guy. 90 to 94. Thelma Louise. River runs through a true romance, California vacation interview with Vampire. It's like, uh, every girl I know loves this guy. Not sure, is he Redford? What, what's the path for him? Might be Redford. Didn't know.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:07Bill Simmons?

  Then it's leading man on training wheels for the next four years. Seven, big hit for him. Twelve monkeys, sleepers. Seven years in Tibet. And then Meet Joe Black, they really went for it with him and it did, the movie wasn't good. But they went, that was the movie where it's like Brad Pitt's a massive star. He's with Anthony Hopkins. We're really going for this. It didn't work.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  It was the movie where they were like, so it was the movie where they were like, let's just put Brad Pitt in a movie with an older guy and an interesting young face and see if he can just movie star his way through it.

• 37:40Bill Simmons?

  This is a Robert Redford part?

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:42Bill Simmons?

  Can you be Robert Redford for two hours?

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Actually, not what Brad Pitt does, though.

• 37:46Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Brad Pitt leaves, he needs a little something.

• 37:48Bill Simmons?

  He needs to, oh, he's, it's always been said, but he's like the best looking character actor of all time.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Right, he needs a little something. He doesn't just do that, even in A River Runs Through It.

• 37:58Bill Simmons?

  Good movie.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Well, not A River Runs Through, I didn't mean that one. Cause you left out Legends of the Fall. Was it in there? Did you have it in there?

• 38:02Bill Simmons?

  It's later.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Okay. Legends of the Fall is a very important movie for Brad Pitt to me because Legends of the Fall was the movie where a lot of people fell in love.

• 38:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Right? But.

• 38:14Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I should, that was 94, that should have been in there.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, but there's something going on with that movie. That movie is like a serious drama. It's not a dreamy rom com about a guy coming back and his death and all of that stuff. And death is about the, no, that movie is about three brothers go away to war or two brothers go away to war. They come back, they're trying to fuck each other's girls.

• 38:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  All kinds of stuff. There's all kinds of mystic, beautiful, ethereal shit happening. And that is the perfect Brad Pitt role.

• 38:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  And so he goes away from that, but he always has to have a little something in the movie that's a little grimy, that's a little more. We don't just trust Brad Pitt just to smile his way through a movie.

• 38:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, True Romance, he's Floyd, which is one of the funniest like Tarantino characters. California Caution, he's a maniac.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 39:01Bill Simmons?

  Like, that's a, just a nuts movie. To be classic.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  He does, he does Maniac again in, in Twelve Monkeys.

• 39:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:09Bill Simmons?

  So when he's leading man in Training Wheels, seven, Twelve Monkeys, Sleeper, seven years Tibet, Meet Joe Black. It's like, alright, this might not ha- this might not happen the way we thought, but there's still something, something really good here. And then he becomes an A-lister in the next five years. Fight Club, Snatch, The Mexican, which was a movie that didn't do that well, but it was Julia Roberts, Sam Gagnon, Finney. Ocean's Eleven, I think's the big one.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:33Bill Simmons?

  Cause now he's with, Damon's on the rise, Clooney's a star, the three of them together, the movie becomes massive. And by the time Troy comes out in 04,

• 39:44Bill Simmons?

  it's like Brad Pitt can carry a movie like this. Wasn't a very good movie.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  I liked it, like, but I just remember Troy. I was in, uh, I was going to see a movie with Candace Stein. Shout out to Candace and her whole family, my girlfriend at the time, I'm sure she's married or whatever. And the Troy trailer came on. And Brad Pitt was Achilles. He had let the hair flow and all of a sudden, we're sitting there, we're in a, with a black woman in a black movie theater in a black city in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And Brad comes on screen and she goes, uh.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  And I'm sitting there at over 300 pounds. I'm like, yo, man, can you not? And she goes, I'm sorry, Brad's still fine. And she was saying still, and that was 20 years ago. She was saying still.

• 40:40Bill Simmons?

  20 plus years ago.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  And that was 20 plus years ago.

• 40:42Bill Simmons?

  That leads us to the next stage of Brad Pitt, the Brangelina heyday.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:47Bill Simmons?

  04 to 11, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Benjamin Button, and Glorious Bastards, Moneyball were the highlight movies. But he's like an A-plus lister from the, the Brangelina thing makes him one of the most famous people in the world.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Could you make an argument that it's not actually until Mr. and Mrs. Smith, that Brad Pitt is a hyper, super megawatt A-lister?

• 41:13Bill Simmons?

  That's what I just said. I think he's an A-plus lister from Brangelina.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 41:17Bill Simmons?

  I think he was an A-lister.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  What I was gonna say rather than listening to you.

• 41:19Bill Simmons?

  No, no, he was an A-lister and then he became an A-plus lister.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:23Bill Simmons?

  But, but he was like, he had the celebrity relationships, like he dated Paltrow, he dated Julia Louis, Jennifer Aniston.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, he always had, but I'm just saying it.

• 41:30Bill Simmons?

  But the Angelina thing was like boom.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  He was on the tip of everybody's tongue. Everyone was talking about what was going on and not just that, but that movie became.

• 41:40Bill Simmons?

  And that movie was good.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  It was a good movie and informative film. Like, they made a bunch of different Mr. And Mrs. Smith type movies after that.

• 41:48Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You know how at the end of the season, your team goes to Cancun? Sometimes earlier than expected, sometimes after blowing a three one series lead, but what if you went to Cancun? With Expedia, save up to 30% when you bundle and save. You can book the flight or the hotel now, then book the rest later. In all fairness, though, hopefully your team doesn't go to Cancun. One, two, three Cancun. Or if they do, you go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save. Savings vary. All right, quick break. This episode is brought to you by Fire TV. You ever sit down, ready to watch the game, only to search and scroll endlessly? If so, you need Fire TV. It shows your live games from your favorite teams all in one place, right on the home screen. No more searching. Just sit down and turn on Fire TV.

• 42:33Bill Simmons?

  Separate subscriptions may be required. Feature and content availability may vary. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. And whether it's a flea flicker or a tush push, you need a plan that fits your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and for your budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. So in Glorious Bastards, and by the way, he works, so he works with Fincher and Benjamin Button.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:06Bill Simmons?

  Interesting movie. Some New Orleans in there.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:10Bill Simmons?

  In Glorious Bastards, Tarantino, and then Moneyball is probably the best he's ever been in a movie, except for maybe Fight Club. He's just like-

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Fight Club is tough. Yeah, it's a tough performance right there.

• 43:20Bill Simmons?

  Fight Club, he's awesome. Like, you're just like, wow, this is like Robert Redford could not have been, not have done this. You are now moving a little closer, almost to De Niro. But Moneyball was like, man, I just fucking like Brad Pitt.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:34Bill Simmons?

  That was like, that was one of those movies. But then we hit the next stage, the swoon. Cause the Brangelina related, they all of a sudden they have like six kids.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Bad press.

• 43:43Bill Simmons?

  Shit, there's some bad press floating around. There's a lot of weird stories about them. And the movies, even though he's producing, doing some good producing stuff, Killing Them Softly, Allied, Fury.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  I love that Killing Them Softly movie. I just gotta say it, though.

• 43:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah?

• 43:58Speaker 01

  You do, you, have you seen that one?

• 44:01Bill Simmons?

  I might have saw it when it came. Who's in it?

• 44:03Speaker 01

  So it's him, James Gyllenhaal is in it. There's a, it takes place in, in, in, in New Orleans.

• 44:08Bill Simmons?

  New Orleans month candidate?

• 44:10Speaker 01

  New Orleans month candidate. There's, well, either it takes place in New Orleans or it's shot in New Orleans.

• 44:14Bill Simmons?

  Well, we have to do Angel Heart Last for New Orleans month, because then that's when the pod gets canceled.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Canceled the pod. But, uh, there's a robbery, they bring Brad Pitt. It's a good movie.

• 44:22Bill Simmons?

  All right, I'll give it another chance. I don't think it did well.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  It, no, it didn't at all.

• 44:25Bill Simmons?

  And he, the, the most successful things he was involved with were Twelve Years a Slave and The Big Short, which he was, he wasn't like leading those movies.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Just in them.

• 44:34Bill Simmons?

  And then the Angelina thing went sideways, and it felt like his career might be over.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  There was the tank movie that came out.

• 44:41Bill Simmons?

  The By the Sea movie was like, and then, um, then there was the allegations she had, and the family stuff went, and then Tarantino, this is the last spot. Tarantino kind of revives him with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:56Bill Simmons?

  Covid happens. Everyone forgets everything with Covid. And then we get to F1. Now he's in his 60s.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:01Bill Simmons?

  He's had a hit movie in his 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  This is a very important movie.

• 45:07Bill Simmons?

  Not, not, nothing.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  This is a very important movie for him. Like a super important movie. This might be.

• 45:12Bill Simmons?

  I think for the catalog, he kind of needed it.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Had to have it. Had to have it big.

• 45:17Bill Simmons?

  Because like Redford didn't have a movie in his 60s that was like a massive movie like this.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Also, there's something else that Brad needed, in my opinion. The only way to quiet any chatter online about you, and I, I don't like to, I'm way moved past the point where I litigate people's personal lives unless, we're talking about really shitty people. But the best way to, to, to, in this day and age, is to, to quiet the chatter about you. That's anything that anyone might be saying is, is going, look, nobody cares. And like, just, that's the only way you can do it. You just be like, hey, they say this about you, maybe you weren't the greatest husband of all.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  I have no advice to Diddy. Okay. There's zero advice. It'll be zero conversation. There's no advice, okay?

• 46:01Bill Simmons?

  It's like camera two, no advice.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  No advice. But like, in that situation, look, nobody cares.

• 46:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Everything is between me and my family or whomever or whatever. I just went and did this gigantic, big, huge movie. All the sponsors, the movie got ma- made like forty or fifty million dollars just in sponsorships, right? But Apple, everybody's fucking with me. Everybody went to see it. Nobody cares. Next story, next movie.

• 46:25Bill Simmons?

  The difference, so in a weird way, it's kinda humiliating what happened with Cruise, where Cruise, when he hit a certain point in age, just basically became Mission Impossible, Top Gun Maverick guy.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:36Bill Simmons?

  And those are like the two kind of directions he'd go. Brad Pitt, cause Cliff Booth and Sonny are not that far off from each other, I don't think. I mean, Sonny's a little more talkative, but same kinda thing, like worn down, still super handsome, can still connect with any woman in the room. Guys are comfortable around him, like that kinda balance.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Still can get it done?

• 46:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and you believe him in any role.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:00Bill Simmons?

  So maybe he has a little bit more upside, but the one thing with him is now he kinda talks like Buffalo Bill a little bit, like he has a dip in his mouth.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:10Bill Simmons?

  So I don't, like, I thought he was amazing in Moneyball. I actually think he could've made a case, he could've won best actor for that.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Who won that year?

• 47:17Bill Simmons?

  I think it might've been, uh, was it, was it, uh, Dana Day Lewis from Lincoln?

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Lincoln, Lincoln year, yeah. Moneyball's fantastic.

• 47:24Bill Simmons?

  But now, you're in your age sixty-one, you're in your real life, you kinda does all his lines like this, a little half smile on his face, but it works.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does.

• 47:31Bill Simmons?

  You're buying it. I don't think he could be like, some of the roles he played in the nineties, two thousands, I just don't think he'd do it anymore.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Well, no. I mean, he's gone from being, cause if you look back at that,

• 47:42Bill Simmons?

  Cause he's sixty-one.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  If you look back at that, at that, uh, at that decade, he was in a lot of those movies, young cowboy. He was a young cowboy. He's young cowboy in Seven. See him, he's the young, he's even kind of, although.

• 47:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, Seven, he's just like skinny cop guy.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  I know, but he's the, he's being schooled by the older, more grizzled, I'm outta here vet. Uh, Ocean's Eleven, him and Rusty and Danny kinda on the same level, but now he's the old cowboy in the movie and it, is it, he, it, the question is, can he still keep up? And you would've thought that Brad Pitt would've never gotten to a point to where you put him in a movie and then the question would be like. He could never play the can you still do it guy? Cause he's just too otherworldly handsome, otherworldly charismatic. But he was able to kind of make that case in this movie.

• 48:32Bill Simmons?

  He did a nice job, and I'm sure there's some bells and whistles with it. But he's done a really nice job of keeping his looks as like an A plus leading man guy. Which I think when people hit their late 50s, 60s on the big screen. You just start transitioning or you end up like Cruz where it just doesn't seem Cruz Jennifer Connelly in the bedroom scene, Top Gun Maverick, one of the funniest scenes of the 2020s.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:55Bill Simmons?

  You just end up veering in that road where you're like, come on, guys. What are we doing?

• 48:59Speaker 01

  But I gotta give Tom credit.

• 49:01Bill Simmons?

  For hysterically laughing with his no shirt on?

• 49:04Speaker 01

  I gotta give Tom credit in that movie for, I know it's the script for going with age appropriate co-star, cause Tom was wilding for years.

• 49:13Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  If I told him it would be Tom Cruise and it'd be the hottest 23 year old, 24 year old, up and coming actor, we'd be like, come on, Tom, man.

• 49:22Bill Simmons?

  So him with Anna de Armas in Top Gun Maverick might not have worked.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Would not have worked.

• 49:29Bill Simmons?

  Brad could pull it off though, cause Brad's one of those, we looked up after, my kids were like, how old is he? They were, they thought he was younger than I was. Brad being 61?

• 49:40Bill Simmons?

  Well, does he look 61?

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Fuck no. No, no fucking way.

• 49:46Bill Simmons?

  I, I was like, I think he's like 49. I had no idea.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  No, he doesn't.

• 49:51Bill Simmons?

  They were like, holy shit, he's 61 years old?

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Form does he look 61? No.

• 49:56Bill Simmons?

  My, uh, my only nitpicks for this movie, it has a poker scene and I just don't think they, that's where they needed my sports movie consultancy agency to come in and help them out. Didn't have a feel. They're playing Texas Hold'em. It's kind of a key scene in the movie and we don't really see the cards long enough in the middle. I don't know who's, there's no drama. Like it is not Casino Royale.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:17Bill Simmons?

  Just put it that way. I didn't love that. Um, I didn't, I, you know, Sonny. Not to spoil the ending, but the big, big race at the end. It's a long trip for him to get there. And he just kind of shows up right before and it's like, oh, man.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Oh, you mean, you mean the actual F1 race?

• 50:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  I thought you meant the Baja thing. The Baja thing was not needed at all.

• 50:42Bill Simmons?

  No, I would have not had that. I would just cut that out. But the, him just going to Saudi Arabia or Abu Dhabi, wherever he was.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:50Bill Simmons?

  On a, on a moment's notice.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Premium economy.

• 50:52Bill Simmons?

  And then he's gonna be in a race?

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:55Bill Simmons?

  Like, it doesn't take like a day and a, like Martin McCully did that and he got knocked down like a round.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Right. But look, this is, this is his thing. He, he travels around in a van. He lives in a van. He, he's, he's a rough and tumbled. Like Ben said in the, in the commentary of Armageddon. They don't understand his rough and tumble ways.

• 51:17Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  So, he, he's the type of guy that could get off the plane, get right into the cockpit of an F1 car and go win the race, the biggest race of his life.

• 51:26Bill Simmons?

  Very important Brad Pitt catalog movie. Very important movie. Good, Big Kaczynski now, I think, has hit that Tony Scott, like whatever his next movie is, I'm gonna go.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  I'm watching it. Also, very important movie for Apple.

• 51:39Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah. Might have like saved their movie business.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Again, I don't know, saved. They got so much money burning the cash.

• 51:44Bill Simmons?

  I know, but would they have just kept trotting out $300 million checks for movies if this didn't work?

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Man.

• 51:50Bill Simmons?

  They, and they promoted it great.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  They did.

• 51:52Bill Simmons?

  And I try to avoid all of it because I never like to know anything when I go to a movie. But they, it was hard to escape, especially like even if you went to Apple TV, it was like, F1's coming, F1's coming. They're like banging it in your head.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  On there right now, you see F1, F1. I'm, you know, I'm just gonna go check it out.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  I think it was an important movie, more so not from, not for Apple from a financial standpoint, because I don't think that really matters to them. But I do think from the standpoint of, hey, we can put together a film and this is not a shot at Scorsese's movie.

• 52:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Not at all. But we can put together a film that is legitimately successful. And when I say legitimately successful, I mean.

• 52:32Bill Simmons?

  Worldwide successful.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Worldwide successful. Our studio, our talent, our production, we go out and we make one that just attracts more. I mean, not that they're gonna have any problem getting talent.

• 52:43Bill Simmons?

  Good. Well, let's all get that Apple money.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  I'm with it.

• 52:46Bill Simmons?

  And start pitching them stuff tomorrow.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:50Bill Simmons?

  And then we forgot to mention Brad Pitt. Now in two of the best sports movies of the 21st century.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Oh, Moneyball.

• 52:57Bill Simmons?

  Not ready to do, I don't know if it's top five, top seven. I gotta probably do a ranking at some point this summer, but they're both in the top 10. There's no question.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Is he two for two though? Are those his only two sports movies?

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Is he two for two?

• 53:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he doesn't have like a legend of bagger Vance hiding his skeleton in his closet.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  I'm trying to think like I'm missing something. He hasn't.

• 53:17Bill Simmons?

  When are we doing that on the rewatchables?

• 53:19Speaker 01

  I'm not doing it.

• 53:21Bill Simmons?

  You're not in it, that one?

• 53:22Speaker 01

  Y'all could do it.

• 53:23Bill Simmons?

  Could it be for how the fuck did this movie happen, bud?

• 53:26Speaker 01

  Will, what the fuck are you all right now?

• 53:28Bill Simmons?

  Everybody, why? That team didn't know how to play golf. They had to let Crash Course teach them. That'd be a fun movie to make fun of. Alright, so last thing before we go. Now this is a spoiler.

• 53:45Bill Simmons?

  Did the right person, so if you haven't seen the movie yet, just go, you can just fast forward to the next segment. Did the right person win the last race? It was a swerve. The way they set it up, I was actually really surprised how missionary position, old school, sports movie, traditional they went. It's like, let's have the old white guy win this one. I thought for sure. The new guy was, and he was gonna sacrifice so the new guy win, and they both win. And they really zagged. And then we were arguing about it in the car after. And my kids were like, no, no, but DP won too because, because the fireworks are behind him. He's got, he's gonna win a lot of races coming. I was like, I don't know. Like Sonny's really gonna win the race? So.

• 54:29Bill Simmons?

  I thought it was a little 1980s-ish.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  I'm gonna try to get my Mahoney on here and be concise, but it's tough. I'm glad he won. Okay? I'm glad he won because he had never won before.

• 54:43Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  To me, my thing is this was a big point of contention when we left the theater as well. It's four of us. We went to see the movie. Everybody had a different take.

• 54:54Bill Simmons?

  But do you think it was a swerve? Or did they just go Jerry Bruckheimer? Cause he produced the old school Hollywood. No, no, Brad's gotta win the race. This is how it goes.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  I'm looking at the movie going into that final race going, wow, who needs to win here? Who, do we need to have a story where Brad ensures that Dampson's character wins?

• 55:15Speaker 01

  But if we do that, sure, he shepherds this young man, but then he never wins a race. This reminds me of my, uh, great disdain for a movie called Mr. 3000.

• 55:29Bill Simmons?

  Uh, I don't like that movie.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  But here's, I'm not talking about, I like the movie just fine, but the fact that he has 3000 hits, he comes back to get the one hit, and then he sacrifices bunts or whatever, and sacrifices that last hit for the team, stupid to me.

• 55:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  I think about 493 home runs all the time for Fred McGriff, and I'm like, Fred McGriff was seven home runs away from 500. I would have played nine more years.

• 55:55Bill Simmons?

  Just be a corpse.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Just to get those seven home runs. So to me, when I look at like guys like, uh, like the Sonny character in this movie, let him win one race, man. Let him win a race. Let, let, let him win one race.

• 56:08Bill Simmons?

  Do you think DP would have been that excited about it, though?

• 56:11Speaker 01

  That's his, but that's his character arc. His character arc is, he's come so far that he can be excited that Sonny won his race. Sonny's come so far that he doesn't sabotage himself anymore.

• 56:22Bill Simmons?

  See, this was Jason Tatum and Jaylen Brown, when they had the, when Jason didn't win the finals MVP, but he was happy for Jaylen Brown, because they both won.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  That would have been-

• 56:30Bill Simmons?

  This is what I was trying to say a year ago.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  That would have been if DP was driving and he just choked in the last lap.

• 56:39Bill Simmons?

  Jason Tatum's in a boot right now. What are you doing?

• 56:41Speaker 01

  He's doing great. I'm glad he's doing great. He's doing great. I saw, is, is, did you see him walking?

• 56:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's swimming. He's walking around in a boot.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  He's gonna be back. Bill?

• 56:48Bill Simmons?

  He's fine.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  He might be back.

• 56:50Bill Simmons?

  I'm not, we're not allowing ourselves to think about it. We don't have a center.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 56:54Bill Simmons?

  Um, yeah, that, and then, um, flying, now we can say, because I turned the spoiler alert thing off, um, or on, um, flying to Abu Dhabi, showing up right for the race, and then winning a Formula One race. Because my son, my son was like, should I start, like- Do you think I could be an F1 driver? Like, it's like one of those conversations. I was like, we're all worried. We're like, this is gonna be a new fascination for you. And we were all like, the amount of concentration and endurance you need to have to do that. It's like, you can't even, to the amount of locked in, you have to be to be locked in for that long. It's like a special kind of human being, and that is not my son.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  It's like a, like a astronaut.

• 57:40Bill Simmons?

  It's not anyone I know.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, who knows? You ever see those guys, their old grainy pictures where they're like behind the wheel of a co-car or a soapbox car when they're like seven or eight years old? They're like little bit, "Look at me, hi." You know what I'm saying? But what I always think about is, I think about these drivers like Lewis and Michael Schumacher and all of those guys, I think about all Senna and all those guys. But I also think about how many sunny hazes there must be out there.

• 58:07Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Guys who wrecked it, fucked their backs up or whatever, and now they're somewhere, you know, popping pain pills for the rest of their life and they didn't make it. That's why I was happy that he won the race.

• 58:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, cuz one of the things I don't understand is F1, cuz it seemed like when he was trying to sabotage the race early on and like basically causing little accidents.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  The safety car?

• 58:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and I was like, can people do this? Like, it feels like that would be a big thing if people did shit like this.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  That's the part of the sport.

• 58:34Bill Simmons?

  That's where we don't know.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  Exactly, that's the part of it where I'm holding the movie's hand going, okay, if you guys say this can happen, then this can happen.

• 58:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, well, that's like probably what it's like to watch a basketball movie with us.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:45Bill Simmons?

  So I remember the first year of ER, we watched with my stepmother one of the episodes, and she was like, oh, my stepmother was a doctor. And she was like, that's stupid, that would never happen. Oh, my God, they would never happen. And we were just like, can you just stop? Can you just let us enjoy, enjoy the saphandectomy that's being performed right now, please? Have you seen a show called The Good Doctor, by the way?

• 59:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 59:06Bill Simmons?

  So, we watched Bachelor in Paradise this week.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  What the fuck is going on?

• 59:10Bill Simmons?

  It's always home.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Oh, oh, I see, okay.

• 59:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it was on.

• 59:16Bill Simmons?

  And it ended, and they, you know, the streamers do this new thing where they just shove.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  They just make you watch the next thing.

• 59:21Bill Simmons?

  There's no credits, it's just, there's a new show starting. So The Good Doctor started, never seen it, never seen one moment of it. And it was the pilot episode.

• 59:30Bill Simmons?

  And we were kind of like locked in.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  You fucking with it.

• 59:32Bill Simmons?

  It's pretty good.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Young kid.

• 59:35Bill Simmons?

  It was like, it was like kind of the Good Doctor's background. It's pretty good. Network TV, maybe I'm aging into the demo finally. Maybe I should start watching.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  NCIS Simmons?

• 59:45Bill Simmons?

  Maybe this should be my new podcast where I age the over 55 shows. I just started, it's like, oh, good Matlock last night.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Cannot believe, Matlock, Kathy Bates.

• 59:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  Kathy Bates is Matlock now. NCIS Simmons with the lady from True Blood. She's in the show, it's called like Elizabeth or something like that. I know these shows because my mom.

• 1:00:05Bill Simmons?

  You see that, and my dad.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:06Bill Simmons?

  My dad was furious they canceled Blue Bloods, couldn't believe it. Felt like it had five more years, but then they spun off Donnie Wahlberg into Boston Blue. Which is launching in September.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. It's in Boston?

• 1:00:19Bill Simmons?

  We're back. Go ahead, make your, go make your jokes. Go ahead, go ahead.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:00:23Bill Simmons?

  Make your jokes about the three-episode arc. Go ahead.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  I'm saying he's a, he's a cop in Boston.

• 1:00:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  So we'll make sure that us in the community, we keep track of the police brutality events that are portrayed in the show.

• 1:00:36Bill Simmons?

  It's gonna be a positive role model.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  Per show, then it's not real.

• 1:00:41Bill Simmons?

  Oh, wait.

• 1:00:45Bill Simmons?

  Donnie Wahlberg, very close to Jalen Brown, could see a Jalen Brown cameo.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  That's his friend?

• 1:00:49Bill Simmons?

  On Boston Blue, yeah. Donnie Wahlberg's like very tight with the Celtics.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  So Donnie Wahlberg is, is Mark Wahlberg cool with Jalen Brown?

• 1:00:57Bill Simmons?

  I don't know Mark Wahl, I don't, I don't, I can't speak for Mark Wahlberg.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, Jalen, I want you to Google.

• 1:01:02Bill Simmons?

  Sold his house to Paris Hilton.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  I want you to Google, because, all right, so Mark Wahlberg has done a lot.

• 1:01:09Bill Simmons?

  No, no, no, we're not doing this. All right. Should we bring in Charles to talk about Superman or no?

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  Bring in Charles.

• 1:01:15Bill Simmons?

  All right. This episode is brought to you by Workday. Guessing is for game shows, not your business, especially when your margin for error is zero. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance, and IT with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. So every AI action is permission aware, giving you accuracy 24/7 and the ability to not just get work done, but get it done right. It's a new Workday. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Excitement is in the air. That's right. It's the start of NBA season. I can't wait to get together with friends, share some Michelob Ultras and watch Tip Off. Plus, as the official beer sponsor of the NBA,

• 1:01:57Bill Simmons?

  Michelob Ultra is getting you closer to the action with experiences that make you feel like you're courtside to actual courtside tickets. Enter now for a chance to win at michelobultra.com/courtside. Michelob Ultra Courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21 plus. Begins on October 1st, 2026. Ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry. Entry deadlines, prizes and details. All right. Charles Soames is here.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, what up?

• 1:02:26Bill Simmons?

  Van's partner in the Midnight Boys.

• 1:02:27Speaker 02

  Kibiu, kibiu.

• 1:02:28Bill Simmons?

  You guys are going to convince me to go see the Superman movie. I'll just make the case. This is how this started. Superman came out in 1978. It's on the theater.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:02:38Bill Simmons?

  I really like Superman 2, a movie we'll do at the Rewatchables at some point. Do you like Superman 2?

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  I love Superman 2. Who doesn't?

• 1:02:43Bill Simmons?

  Superman 2 is great. There's like some real stuff in there about how far will you go to keep your powers?

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:02:52Bill Simmons?

  It's like some sports shit in there.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  That's in a lot of superhero movies, though, that you don't watch.

• 1:02:58Bill Simmons?

  Go.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  True.

• 1:02:59Bill Simmons?

  That's true. Then they made Superman again. Then I think they made it a third time.

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  They made four original Christopher Reeve Supermans. Then they came back in 2006 with the Brian Singer Superman. And then.

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  There's Man of Steel.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Man of Steel Superman.

• 1:03:14Bill Simmons?

  The Cavill one, people kind of liked, right? And not really? Or they liked Cavill, but they didn't like the movie?

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  Cavill wasn't given a super awesome opportunity to play Superman the way he was supposed to be played. He never really got great scripts.

• 1:03:28Speaker 02

  No, actually, the thing is, once he got good at playing Superman.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  It was over.

• 1:03:33Speaker 02

  It was over. All the movies had flopped to such an extent. Then, do you remember The Rock coming in and being like, the hierarchy of the DCU is changing? So it was just like, he got caught up in a bad system.

• 1:03:44Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Well, now we have another Superman.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  Corn sweat.

• 1:03:48Bill Simmons?

  But you guys liked it.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. I did. Charles liked it.

• 1:03:52Bill Simmons?

  I don't wanna see it. I told you.

• 1:03:53Speaker 02

  I'm a hater, and even I liked it. Alright, let's put, so you said something crazy over at the office where you.

• 1:03:59Bill Simmons?

  Was it crazy?

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  Get him.

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  You said, you said to me, James Bond is cooler than Batman. And I would say, not only is that a crazy take, that kind of points us towards, why are you so, why do you have such a ill will to superheroes?

• 1:04:16Bill Simmons?

  Not an ill will. I just like, I like my heroes to be at least somewhat realistic.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  James Bond is realistic.

• 1:04:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:04:24Bill Simmons?

  There you go.

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  Alright.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  Makes a lot of sense.

• 1:04:26Bill Simmons?

  Handsome English guy with some gadgets.

• 1:04:28Speaker 02

  John Wick, realist.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  If James Bond.

• 1:04:30Bill Simmons?

  John Wick, they killed his dog. Somebody kills your dog.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  They killed Batman's parents. What is more realistic than that struggle?

• 1:04:36Bill Simmons?

  And then Batman learned how to fly off buildings. Like, once you're flying, that's where my suspension goes sideways. But I've seen all these movies. I just, with Superman, I don't know what's left to explore.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Aw, man.

• 1:04:48Bill Simmons?

  Cause James Bond.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  You're about to get me started.

• 1:04:50Bill Simmons?

  Go ahead. I wanna hear it.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  Um, okay, so, you guys, this is not the ring of earth, so this is about to get a little bit schmaltzy and, and, and whatever. I can't wait. So, I, I think there's a reason why we keep coming back to the story of Superman. The reason why we keep coming back to the story, and we've always had stories like this, and we talked about this on the Midnight Boys, is that the story of something that is, let's face it, Superman is a higher being than the rest of the people on earth that surround him, right? It's a very powerful being.

• 1:05:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  But chooses to do good. A being that is that powerful with godlike, almost limitless powers, that chooses to do good is.

• 1:05:29Bill Simmons?

  Unlike our grown species.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  Who chose the other way, right? Because when we are human beings and we get power, a lot of power, even earthly power, we often don't choose to be good. So Superman, to me, is a character that reflects the durability of humanity. Like, oh my god, he's such a big deal, but he just wants to be one of us. He wants to have a relationship, he wants to have a job, he wants to get a cat out of a tree.

• 1:05:57Bill Simmons?

  He's saddled by his greatness.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  Saddled by his greatness.

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  Which you love. This is a storyline that you invest in every single sports season. Why is it with superheroes, you can't?

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  You would say all of this about Jokic, but you won't say it about Kal-El from the Planet Crypto.

• 1:06:11Bill Simmons?

  They got him a good bench this year. Does Superman have a bench in this movie?

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  Yes, he does. He does. Mr. Terrific, hot girl metamorpho.

• 1:06:20Bill Simmons?

  Who's, who's hot girl?

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 1:06:23Bill Simmons?

  Who's playing hot girl?

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  Isabella Merced.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  Well, you didn't watch Last of Us either?

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, wait, wait. I got one for you, though. It's not her.

• 1:06:30Bill Simmons?

  Last of, Last of Us, the zombie one?

• 1:06:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Bill Simmons?

  That lasted five episodes.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  Rachel Brosnahan, though.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  That's not, that's not the, that's not. Cat Grant.

• 1:06:38Speaker 02

  Cat Grant. That's a, that's a Bill, that's a Bill Shaw.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  That's a Bill special. Bill, there's something, there's something for you in this film, I'm telling you.

• 1:06:45Bill Simmons?

  Okay, so in the whole Ringer verse, because we, it got, it got pretty grim there for a few years with some of the movies. We talked about it.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  Our friendship.

• 1:06:55Bill Simmons?

  Is grim, is grim fair?

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  I will say, Van and I had a lot of like, it got so bad, I'm like, damn, our shit is like fucked up now.

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  He's not wrong. Like, we, we, like.

• 1:07:06Bill Simmons?

  Like the relationship was in trouble.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  The movies got so bad to where it, the, the, the stuff was so bad to where it was starting to affect our dynamic.

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  Because he was getting really frustrated. I was trying to put on a brave face and the whole group was like, man. I'm like, yo, y'all, get together. I was like, more. We gotta go to work, okay? We gotta watch Secret Invasion. Come on, everybody, this is what we do. And Charles is like, man, fuck these shows.

• 1:07:33Speaker 02

  I was, bro, it was rough, rough.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  The stuff just got bad. Like it.

• 1:07:38Bill Simmons?

  So what, so what got bad? It was too familiar, the CGI? Like, what were the reasons it got bad?

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  They, they flooded the zone. I think the superhero genre was very, very great when it's like, oh, we get two or three movies a year. Then when.

• 1:07:52Bill Simmons?

  So like late 2000s era?

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, but then when Marvel is like, actually, you're gonna have a Marvel hero in your household every single quarter, every single week. And it just diluted the brand to such an extent. And when you see a Superman movie, you're like, oh, this is a cinematic character. I don't necessarily want to see him 52 weeks of the year. I want on July, on a weekend in July, I want to believe a man can fly.

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  Also, the movie making.

• 1:08:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Like, what he, the filmmaking. So with Marvel, there was Kevin Feige and he was connecting all the dots on all of this stuff. And they just overwhelmed their capability and the quality started to suck.

• 1:08:29Bill Simmons?

  So it'd be like if, if a couple baseball movies worked and then they just started making? Five, six baseball movies a year. Be like, alright.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  Think, think about this. They make a baseball movie, right? A Babe Ruth movie.

• 1:08:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  They make a Babe Ruth movie. It's great. They make a, um.

• 1:08:47Bill Simmons?

  So now we're getting Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  But no, not just that. We're getting a, a 52 week series about Mark Limkey. And Jeff Blauzer. You know what I mean? And, and, and, and no discipline is like, okay, you guys love this series we just did about Ken Griffey Jr.

• 1:09:01Bill Simmons?

  Tommy Glavine.

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  No, we were a series about their fucking mothers in the 1950s and what the fuck they was up to. And I'm like, hey, yo, show me the fucking superheroes, bro.

• 1:09:10Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:09:11Speaker 02

  Too much.

• 1:09:11Bill Simmons?

  So we got back to the basics.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  Back to the basics.

• 1:09:13Bill Simmons?

  Cause it feels like the heyday was late 2000s when we had Dark Knight, which is one of the best movies.

• 1:09:19Speaker 02

  That was the heyday?

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  That's not the heyday.

• 1:09:21Bill Simmons?

  That's the heyday of, of Batman. When we had Dark Knight and Iron Man right around each other.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:09:25Bill Simmons?

  And it felt like it reinvented the possibilities of how great these movies could be.

• 1:09:29Speaker 02

  You hopped off before we got Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther, Avengers.

• 1:09:34Bill Simmons?

  There was too many of them. And like even Iron Man 2, I thought was super disappointing. And that was when.

• 1:09:39Speaker 02

  Not the best movie. Not the best movie.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  But, but, but, but I would say the heyday would be 16 to 19.

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  Like.

• 1:09:45Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's the second heyday, but I missed that one.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:09:48Bill Simmons?

  Cause I enjoyed that first heyday.

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  Neither of your kids were into the MCU.

• 1:09:51Bill Simmons?

  You know, I tried to get it going with my son and it just never completely took. We started, we started it correctly and by like the fifth one, we were out.

• 1:09:59Speaker 02

  But don't you also feel like Superman is in that like, is in that milieu of characters to me where it's like, James Bond, Batman, Superman, like you have these like characters where we're kind of like, damn, I kind of want to see if they can work. Rocky with Creed. You, you have those type of characters where it's like, it kind of tells you where America.

• 1:10:19Bill Simmons?

  Returns after, if it's the same, right?

• 1:10:23Speaker 02

  You liked F1. I liked F1. F1 wasn't reinventing the wheel. It's just Top Gun Maverick again, but there is something about like-

• 1:10:30Bill Simmons?

  All right, settle down, Charles. Jesus.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  This is, this is the, this is Top Gun Maverick again. This is the guy, this is the guy. This is Chuck Wagon.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  F1 is Top Gun Maverick.

• 1:10:40Bill Simmons?

  But it was, I mean, the IMAX stuff was-

• 1:10:42Speaker 02

  You know, whoa, I love this movie. I, it's one of my favorite movies of the year. But they, they didn't reinvent the wheel on this.

• 1:10:49Bill Simmons?

  I know, but my fear with all this stuff is, we talked about this a little before, just, there's no way to reinvent the wheel because the wheel has already been looked at every single fucking way at this point. So, so that's when a movie like, trying to think of like a wholly original movie that, like Sinners. When that came out, we were like, whoa, this is a movie unlike anything I've seen before. Even though it had some vampire roots and all the different things that it, it just felt like original creative IP.

• 1:11:15Speaker 02

  But how does, but how does even Ryan Coogler get to Sinners where it's like- True, he has a- It's like Christopher Nolan had the ability, of course, he did the Batman films, but he had the ability to make a bunch of original movies. And then Batman-

• 1:11:28Bill Simmons?

  That led to Batman.

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  Got him into the category where it's like, oh, we're going to see Inception, we're going to see this. Ryan Coogler basically had to prove to these studios, all right, I did Creed and I did Fruitvale Station, but Black Panther showing y'all that I can actually do a, a four quadrant blockbuster movie.

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  Do you, do you ever ask yourself, you ever wonder what attracts somebody like Christopher Nolan to Batman? Or like what attracts, why, why do some of these guys, like when you, when you got to Batman Begins and you look at who's in the movie, it's Liam Neeson and Morgan Freeman and all of these people, and I know everybody wants to pay for their winter homes and, and Aspen and all of that stuff like that. I get it. I get that you're an actor, you gotta make money. I get that. But also, there is something with creatives on that level that intrigues them about making movies or content with a character that is so well-known and so well-understood because they get to think about,

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  what can I do with this character that's actually there that hasn't been done?

• 1:12:33Bill Simmons?

  So, there's four reasons.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:12:35Bill Simmons?

  That's, the one is the one you just said, challenge.

• 1:12:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:38Bill Simmons?

  Everybody has stared at this IP for a hundred years. It's a challenge for me. I can solve this.

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:44Bill Simmons?

  Two is money. Three is ring culture.

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  Oh, you wanna win?

• 1:12:49Bill Simmons?

  Like in sports.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:50Bill Simmons?

  This is like, if you can pull it off on this, it's like when, I remember talking to Affleck about this. Cause I wrote about this when he did, uh, what did he do? When he did the Superman movie.

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  Ben Casey, cause it's two.

• 1:13:02Bill Simmons?

  Ben, okay.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  When, uh.

• 1:13:03Speaker 02

  He did Batman, he was Batman. And Batman versus Superman.

• 1:13:05Bill Simmons?

  When he did Batman versus Superman.

• 1:13:06Speaker 02

  Justice League, all of it.

• 1:13:08Bill Simmons?

  But remember, he was on a heater, cause he had had the town, Argo, like he was like.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  He was the fucking man.

• 1:13:14Bill Simmons?

  He, he, he had won it back. And then it's like, why are you doing this?

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  And it's the second go around, because he was Daredevil, so that Daredevil movie he did.

• 1:13:21Bill Simmons?

  But you know why he did it? Cause he was like.

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  My kid.

• 1:13:24Bill Simmons?

  Fuck it. If I pull, it was like, basically, it was like Tom Brady going for the Tampa Bay Super Bowl. If I can do this, I can do anything. So that's the third thing. And then the fourth thing is money.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  Bill, let me tell you something. There's something that people don't talk about as much, but they should. He was sensational.

• 1:13:40Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  Affleck was a great Batman.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  Was a great Batman.

• 1:13:45Bill Simmons?

  He still has the suit. Oh, and the fourth thing is impressing your kids. Everyone always forgets that part. Most of the people that are making movies like this, at some point have kids, or at least one kid under the age of eight, who thinks like, holy shit, my dad's gonna be Batman?

• 1:13:59Speaker 02

  I mean, also.

• 1:13:59Bill Simmons?

  And it's just like impressive.

• 1:14:00Speaker 02

  Look at Tom Holland. Tom Holland as Spider-Man. Does Tom Holland get into a Christopher Nolan movie? Cause if we look at his track record after Spider-Man, could you name me a Tom Holland movie?

• 1:14:12Bill Simmons?

  But does he need like the stamp of approval almost?

• 1:14:14Speaker 02

  I think with like corn sweat, with Holland, with Pattinson, Pattinson like becomes Batman. He didn't need this. He's killing it in terms of just like, oh, he is the indie darling. Everyone loves him. But there's a different thing when Robert Pattinson gets to go to his acting buddies and be like, but y'all not Batman.

• 1:14:33Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's, that's, The Downey is the best example of that, right? Or like Keith Ledger, who just broke back and he's great in that. But then Dark Knight becomes the movie that's probably gonna outlive him 50 years from now.

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  He had a take though. He had a take on the character, character that we're so familiar with. He had a take. And that take went on to define the character. There's one thing about being the Joker. There's another thing about redefining, redefining the Joker. He redefined that character. Even like, I'll give you the, so Nolan, right?

• 1:15:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  The Odyssey. That story is thousands of years old, right? Like, well, hundreds, hundreds. When did the eyes, whatever. It's, it's an ancient by contemporary standard story. But we're gonna keep telling it because the themes in the story are as relevant today as they've been in the past and everybody's gonna wanna retell that. The story of Moses, the story, all of that stuff. It's all the same shit. The, the, the, the Matrix is a-

• 1:15:33Speaker 02

  It's good. You guys are winning me back a little bit.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  The Matrix is a retelling of the Jesus story. Now, I will say this, we should talk about specifically like what is awesome about this Superman movie that makes it like worth the trip.

• 1:15:42Speaker 02

  Well, the villain seems good.

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  Lex.

• 1:15:45Speaker 02

  Lex and Nicholas Hou as Lex is phenomenal. Also, I feel like this is a movie where it's gonna be a lot for you. It's very cartoony, it's very comic booky. But I do think that this movie does a very good job of you don't have to see anything. It is, it has that Iron Man feel of just like, I can see- Starting from scratch, basically. And it's not starting from scratch where it's like, you already know the origin story, where it's like Planet blew up, he goes to-

• 1:16:08Speaker 01

  None of that happens here.

• 1:16:09Speaker 02

  They're just like, eh, eh, eh, we don't need that. It starts in the middle of the action where you're like, okay, I get it, like- I do like that.

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  Little Crawl-

• 1:16:15Speaker 02

  James Gunn had some success in the past. Yeah.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  Little Crawl, tell you where you at and it reorients the character. It's your, we said this on the podcast on the Midnight Boys. Most Superman movies, they're looking through his eyes. And if you look through his eyes, everything is weaker because he's way up here. If you look through his eyes, everything is weaker. So you start to wonder like, what the fuck is going on?

• 1:16:40Speaker 02

  Zayn Okich.

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay. He is a bad motherfucker though. He is. You know, he, he, that, that was one of my, you know, I'll look back at the dickhead momentum that I've had in the past. I'm doing it again with Caitlin Clark to a degree, but I don't care, I won't stop.

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  Can you talk him off the Caitlin Clark?

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  I don't wanna talk about it.

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  I like, it's one of the bestags of the 2020s.

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  But, but Jokic is a- I love, it's a great tag. I, I, I asked my, so, just real quick, I'll come back to Superman. I meant to get you on the phone with this guy. So, one of my homeboys, my best friend from Baton Rouge, Ryan Davenport. I remember me and you got into it about the Jokic and the Shaq thing, we're going back and forth about it. So I hit Ryan up, and I know that Ryan is gonna agree with me.

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  You know, my man Ryan was in the streets for a long time, so it's very, he talks the way he talks. And I was like, "Bruh, let me ask you a question, who you think better, Jokic or Shaq?" And he goes, "Man, Jokic." Like, he said he was angry. He didn't, like, he didn't wanna have to say it. He was like, "Man, Jokic, bruh." And I was like, "What?" I was like, "Bruh, you can't do shit with that bitch." He was like, "That bitch get the ball, if you double that bitch, pass that bitch." He's like, he's like, "That bitch, if you, if you one-on-one, he cooking everybody." He, it's Jokic, man, he made Anthony Davis look crazy, it's Jokic, bruh. "I'm sorry, he better." And I was like, I was, after that, I had to, he was mad, he felt the feeling, it's hard to admit it. I still don't agree with him, but I get it. Well, now you got Kaitlyn.

• 1:18:12Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, I got a new foil. Um, the next one has to be black or I'm not getting an agenda. I have to choose, um, I have, you know. Lamar Jackson's sitting there, if he, one more playoff watch. I can't, I can't. No, he's, I'm just saying, he's sitting there. I still gotta get it. It's a good zag. I gotta be able to get into the- People don't expect it. You expect me to go- You're gonna keep people on the toes. Whitlock? No, I can't do that, bruh, they're not gonna let me into the- Why are you getting in, you gonna get in trouble, bruh. Superman, this movie does something different. It orients the story, it puts Superman in the middle of the story. Okay. And the story happens around Superman. Simple fix. Now Superman, Superman is not somebody that you have to question at every single plot turn. So you weren't just pleasantly surprised, you were deliriously surprised. I-

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  You couldn't believe it was good.

• 1:18:59Bill Simmons?

  I got emotional on the podcast.

• 1:19:01Speaker 02

  Wow. Yeah, there were tears. I'm tempered. I hate everything and even I was like, I was like, I can't hate Eric. I was like, ah, they got it. You know what I'm saying? Like, I gotta give.

• 1:19:10Bill Simmons?

  He didn't think it was a perfect movie, but he.

• 1:19:12Speaker 02

  I didn't think it was. It's an eight, like, out of 10. It's like, to me, it's like in that seven, eight range where I'm like.

• 1:19:18Bill Simmons?

  All right, I'm gonna see. You guys won me over.

• 1:19:19Speaker 02

  Hell, fucking yeah.

• 1:19:20Bill Simmons?

  Well, so, give me three movies from the last 15 years. Three Ringer verse movies that I have to see. I know one you're gonna love straight off the bat. Guardians of the Galaxy? You might like that. I could see you liking that, but that's not what I was talking about. Wonder Woman?

• 1:19:35Bill Simmons?

  Bet you would, right?

• 1:19:37Bill Simmons?

  Captain America: Winter Soldier.

• 1:19:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Wait, you've never seen Winter Soldier?

• 1:19:41Bill Simmons?

  I've never seen any of those Captain. You would like that.

• 1:19:43Speaker 02

  Have you seen Black Panther?

• 1:19:44Bill Simmons?

  Black Panther doesn't count. That movie was awesome. Yeah.

• 1:19:47Speaker 02

  Wait, Black Panther definitely fucking counts.

• 1:19:49Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's a Michael B. Jordan. I got, I have season tickets for my guy. Yeah, he's a big Michael B. Jordan fan, but.

• 1:19:53Speaker 02

  Wait, you wait, you're actually on Michael B. Jordan Island?

• 1:19:56Bill Simmons?

  I had, I think I was his first podcast.

• 1:19:58Speaker 02

  I?

• 1:19:59Bill Simmons?

  True Field Station. I think I was the first podcast he ever did.

• 1:20:02Speaker 02

  I've had to defend him a lot. People have been like, hey, when, before Sinners, everybody's now on his fucking dick. Everybody's, I don't know about the twins. I don't know if he can act. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 1:20:11Bill Simmons?

  He's a movie star. Michael movie star, man. There was a couple, couple poor choices. There's a couple hiccups, much like an athlete. Couple bad.

• 1:20:19Speaker 02

  Not on film, though.

• 1:20:21Bill Simmons?

  Well, that, that legal movie he did was bad. We're talking about the, uh, the. Whatever the one where he was the lawyer. That movie is bad.

• 1:20:26Speaker 02

  That got a memory hole. You don't, you don't really play.

• 1:20:28Bill Simmons?

  The movie when he's with Zac Efron and the other guy and they're. That was early on, though. Early on, but that movie's bad. Yeah, but he, but. Did a couple of bad ones. But, look, he is. He's a movie star. He's a, the Michael movie star. Michael movie star. Sinners, he was wait, we were waiting for the, can he be a movie star in a movie movie?

• 1:20:45Speaker 02

  So, actually, not, I.

• 1:20:47Bill Simmons?

  That's like Brad Pitt in F1. Just be a movie star.

• 1:20:49Speaker 02

  Black Panther.

• 1:20:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  Michael B. Jordan, but you saw F1, right? How are you feeling about Dampson as a, as a movie star?

• 1:20:56Bill Simmons?

  We really like him.

• 1:20:57Speaker 02

  Do you recast him as the Chala?

• 1:20:59Bill Simmons?

  Is that on table?

• 1:21:00Speaker 02

  It is. That's the rumor.

• 1:21:01Speaker 01

  So the rumor is he's Black Panther now. That's rumor.

• 1:21:04Speaker 02

  Do you think he can kind of like take that? Did you see in F1? Cause like the question is, can he go from Snowfall TV show to movie stardom in F1? To like leading entire franchise? I'm with you.

• 1:21:17Bill Simmons?

  I think he could do it. I thought he carried himself like a leading man in F1. Even though I didn't really have a history with him.

• 1:21:26Speaker 02

  You didn't watch Snowfall?

• 1:21:27Bill Simmons?

  No, just like a movie like that. Where he's like, I had to believe in him as my hero.

• 1:21:32Speaker 02

  I want him more. I think in the second movie, I'm just like, I think Brad Pitt could take a kind of like backseat. You could.

• 1:21:38Bill Simmons?

  I thought he had it. I think he's a star.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  So I would say easy work. You can't not like Avengers Infinity War. Endgame might not work on you.

• 1:21:46Speaker 02

  He can't watch Infinity. He's not gonna know what's going on, bro.

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  This is fucking Spider-Man. He knows who Spider-Man is. Spider-Man, Iron Man, they're none of the B-list characters in the movie. I think he would know. You know who Thor is, right?

• 1:21:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  I would say Winter Soldier.

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  Definitely.

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  I would say Infinity War, just because I don't think he can miss. And Charles, what's the last one?

• 1:22:04Speaker 02

  Honestly, I think you would like Guardians. You like Team Dynamics?

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  You might like that.

• 1:22:08Bill Simmons?

  I do like Team Dynamics.

• 1:22:10Speaker 02

  I mean, and also the last thing about Superman, you love dogs. Crypto.

• 1:22:15Speaker 01

  Oh shit!

• 1:22:16Speaker 02

  Crypto is amazing in this movie.

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  This is the thing. You're gonna love this movie.

• 1:22:21Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:22:22Speaker 02

  Do you have a good dog or a misbehaved dog?

• 1:22:25Bill Simmons?

  I've had both.

• 1:22:26Speaker 02

  You've had both? You're going flying?

• 1:22:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  Well, you met Murph. Right now. I fuck with Murph.

• 1:22:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:31Speaker 02

  Wait, you don't fuck with Murph?

• 1:22:33Bill Simmons?

  Murph does like everybody.

• 1:22:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:35Bill Simmons?

  He's, you have to come in a few times.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:37Speaker 02

  Ooh, Murph is crypto. Hey, you're gonna love this movie.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:42Bill Simmons?

  Wait, I just blanked on what I was gonna, oh, the superhero movie that, does Charles know my superhero that didn't get a movie yet? That I can't believe didn't get a movie?

• 1:22:49Speaker 01

  I don't think he's ever heard it.

• 1:22:50Bill Simmons?

  You might not have heard it.

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  I think I did. Wait, wait, who's this hero?

• 1:22:54Bill Simmons?

  Plastic Man.

• 1:22:56Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, we did talk about, we haven't talked about it on a pod, but we talked about it at your.

• 1:22:59Bill Simmons?

  So when I was a kid, in the Saturday morning cartoons, they had a Plastic Man cartoon. It was fucking great. And he could do all this like stretch himself out shit and had a hot girlfriend because he was Plastic Man.

• 1:23:11Speaker 02

  Alright, so, let's follow up with a.

• 1:23:13Bill Simmons?

  But I always thought that as the technology got better, I always thought Plastic Man would be in the universe somewhere.

• 1:23:19Speaker 02

  Stretching is very hard to do. They're trying to do it in the new Fantastic Four movie that's coming out in a couple of weeks.

• 1:23:24Bill Simmons?

  Like he could reach up and grab.

• 1:23:25Speaker 01

  You know, canonically, Superman is afraid of Plastic Man.

• 1:23:29Bill Simmons?

  Plus like plastics, you get like what's going on in the world now where we all have little pieces of plastic from.

• 1:23:34Speaker 02

  Well, Plastic Man is not really made of plastic.

• 1:23:36Bill Simmons?

  Well, is Plastic Man bad for the environment? Like, there's all these ways it could go.

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  They might do it, but like he's, he's the, he's ridiculously powerful, so powerful because he used to be a criminal. So powerful that Superman's a little wary of him. Superman's like, this guy might be the most powerful guy in the Justice League. We gotta watch out for Plastic Man.

• 1:23:53Speaker 02

  Who's playing Plastic Man?

• 1:23:54Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. We have the technology now, though.

• 1:23:57Speaker 02

  No, comedically, I think you need like a comic actor.

• 1:24:00Bill Simmons?

  So what's the best?

• 1:24:01Speaker 02

  Bill Hader? Bill Hader would be fucking amazing.

• 1:24:04Bill Simmons?

  Best Ringer verse movie of the first 25 years of the 21st century?

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  We should have done this. We should have done this. It's like the big.

• 1:24:10Bill Simmons?

  You can do it anyway.

• 1:24:12Speaker 02

  No, we're doing it. We got some shits. It's Dark Knight.

• 1:24:14Bill Simmons?

  What's number one?

• 1:24:15Speaker 02

  Dark Knight still hasn't been top. That's why I think like, that's the movie to me, everybody's like. But I, I know what Van's gonna say. He's gonna say, you gonna say Endgame?

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  You know, it is Dark Knight without a doubt. It's, it's not even close, but like, it almost doesn't count.

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  How?

• 1:24:33Speaker 01

  Cause it's not really a superhero movie. It's a psychological thriller with Batman.

• 1:24:37Bill Simmons?

  It's basically The Town.

• 1:24:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it, it, it is. I, no, it's the, the answer is The Dark Knight.

• 1:24:42Bill Simmons?

  It's closer to the Heat, to Heat and the Town.

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  Wait, I could make a really compelling argument that it, the reason why the movie resonates with people like it is, is because it's closer to those movies than it is to the stuff that we're talking about. But movie has Batman and the fucking Joker in it.

• 1:24:56Speaker 02

  So if it's not The Dark Knight, what would it be?

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  Uh, it'd be either Iron Man or Endgame.

• 1:25:00Speaker 02

  Iron Man is actually probably the.

• 1:25:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Before we go, can you make the case for me to watch season four of The Bear? Cause I still haven't dove in yet.

• 1:25:07Speaker 02

  Have you watched season three of The Bear?

• 1:25:09Bill Simmons?

  I watched all three. I love The Bear. I didn't like season three as much.

• 1:25:12Speaker 02

  Season to me. Don't listen to Andy. Andy on the watch. He's my boy.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  Call him out.

• 1:25:17Speaker 02

  You know what I'm saying? But like, there's a lot of hate going on. I think. Then we ended up, I would say, there was probably only one episode this season that I was like, eh, and not even bad, just kind of just like.

• 1:25:29Bill Simmons?

  I haven't listened to the pod yet because I haven't watched the episodes yet.

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  And it was really fun. The bear was fun again because the show got to a point to where.

• 1:25:38Bill Simmons?

  Season three was too grim.

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  It was too grim.

• 1:25:40Bill Simmons?

  I think he got thrown off by the, by that Thanksgiving episode. And how intense that was.

• 1:25:46Speaker 02

  And all the cameos.

• 1:25:47Bill Simmons?

  Weirdly affected season three.

• 1:25:49Speaker 01

  I agree, there is a episode in season four that is a spiritual successor to that Thanksgiving, was it Thanksgiving or Christmas?

• 1:25:59Bill Simmons?

  Christmas, whatever.

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  Like to that episode.

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  The fishes, yeah.

• 1:26:02Speaker 01

  But it's the other way. So where, where that episode was super intense and almost suffocating. This episode has all of the same people, the same family dynamics, however, it's a release. And they executed it really well.

• 1:26:20Speaker 02

  Are you, so is your like apprehension to the bear just that?

• 1:26:24Bill Simmons?

  It's not apprehension, just not ready yet because it's intense.

• 1:26:28Speaker 02

  This one felt less.

• 1:26:29Speaker 01

  It's not, it's not the same anymore.

• 1:26:30Speaker 02

  They took the notes where it was just like, hey, bro, we gotta bring some of the comedy back. I actually laughed this season, which like third season, I was like.

• 1:26:38Bill Simmons?

  Third season was tough. Before we go, can I pitch you a superhero movie?

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  I'm ready.

• 1:26:43Bill Simmons?

  Late nineties baseball steroids era superhero.

• 1:26:46Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:26:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's it. That's all I got.

• 1:26:48Speaker 02

  Wait, why does he, do the steroids give him?

• 1:26:51Bill Simmons?

  Everyone's on steroids, but we actually have a real superhero in baseball and nobody realizes it.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  Oh, that's good.

• 1:26:56Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:26:57Speaker 01

  They, they played around with that. They've played around with that a little bit. Um, but that's good.

• 1:27:02Bill Simmons?

  Like he's like, finally I have some cover because all these guys are these steroid monsters hitting 60 homers. I can finally.

• 1:27:07Speaker 02

  I thought you were saying steroids give him the powers, but no.

• 1:27:10Bill Simmons?

  Right. I can finally play baseball and people won't be suspicious if I'm a superhero because all these other guys are cheap.

• 1:27:15Speaker 02

  He's taking piss.

• 1:27:16Bill Simmons?

  That's all I got to tell you.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  I got to tell you something.

• 1:27:18Bill Simmons?

  That's it. Just a taster.

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  This is actually, we're giving, we're giving away recipes, but this is a limited. And you have a reporter.

• 1:27:24Bill Simmons?

  Eight episode apple?

• 1:27:25Speaker 01

  Eight episode apple. You have a reporter and that reporter is doing some sort of profile on him. It's a hot lady.

• 1:27:32Bill Simmons?

  Starts realizing there's something more going on.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  Starts to realize.

• 1:27:35Bill Simmons?

  She thinks it's a creatine thing, but it's not.

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  At the same time, you know what?

• 1:27:40Speaker 01

  The owner of the team is actually a nefarious supervillain.

• 1:27:46Bill Simmons?

  Hmm, definitely bald, bald white guy.

• 1:27:48Speaker 01

  This guy is doing the whole, he's doing the whole deal. But it starts to become, are you going to continue to chase what's happening on the field? Or are you going to use your superhero powers for good? Whole thing, but it's rated R though. You know, it's sex, it's, it's, it's baseball, it's the whole nine.

• 1:28:05Bill Simmons?

  It's a dirty, baseball superhero steroids movie.

• 1:28:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. What team would you want him to play for?

• 1:28:10Bill Simmons?

  Yankees.

• 1:28:11Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:28:12Speaker 01

  Let's go.

• 1:28:14Bill Simmons?

  Thanks guys, good to see you.

• 1:28:17Bill Simmons?

  All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Ben and Charles, thanks to Gahow and Eduardo as well. I'm going to be back on Sunday, a week from now. So you'll make it. Nothing's happening, it'll be fine. This is the most boring, boring week of the year. If anything crazy major happens, I'll come back. Otherwise, I'm going to be doing football prep, getting ready, trying to top my 27 and 5 on the over/unders from last year, which I'll never top. I'm probably going to suck. But enjoy the, enjoy the rest of the weekend and I'll see you in a week.

• 1:29:00Bill Simmons?

  Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas Star Casino. Or 18 plus and present in DC. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-887-897777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here, visit gambling helpline ma.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-8778-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, I like those guys, star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner.

• 1:29:46Bill Simmons?

  Martin McDonagh, writer-director of The Banshees of Minneh Sharon and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys, Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters Friday. Get tickets now. This episode is brought to you by Core Power Protein Shakes. You know how we always talk about the little things that separate great athletes? Post-workout recovery is a big factor.

• 1:30:30Bill Simmons?

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